John Cowles Sr. (December 14, 1898 – February 25, 1983) was an American newspaper and magazine publisher.

[2] The son of banker, publisher, and politician Gardner Cowles Sr., John was a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard University.

(Quality was an influential creative force in what historians and fans call the Golden Age of comic books).

The following year the Cowles family bought the Minneapolis Tribune and merged it with their company, giving it ownership of the city's major newspapers.

[4]: 57–62 [5] To help counteract the agitation against the Vietnam War in the mid-1960s, Cowles served on a committee that included such notables as: Arthur H. Dean, Dean Acheson, Eugene R. Black, James B. Conant, Thomas S. Gates, Roswell Gilpatric, David Rockefeller, and John J.